STUDENT HEALTH AND WELLBEING SURVEY
September 2023
Dear Parent/Carer,
Student Health and Wellbeing Survey
The School Health Research Network is led by Cardiff University in partnership with Welsh Government, Public Health Wales and Cancer Research UK. Every two years, schools in the Network are invited to take part in the Student Health and Wellbeing Survey. The information collected in the survey is used to compile a Student Health and Wellbeing Report for each school, which supports their work to improve their students’ health and wellbeing.
Your child’s school is taking part in the Student Health and Wellbeing Survey this term. The survey is being managed by Ipsos on behalf of Cardiff University and is completed online under the supervision of a member of school staff. It contains questions on health behaviours, including diet, physical activity, smoking, alcohol, drugs, school life and relationships. Students in Year 9 and above only will be asked a small number of questions relating to sexual behaviour. Each student chooses whether or not they want to complete the survey and they can omit any question they do not want to answer.
At the end of the survey, students are asked to give their name, date of birth and postcode. This enables researchers to connect students’ responses across different rounds of the two-yearly survey, in order to investigate how and why health and wellbeing change through adolescence. It is made clear to students that they do not have to provide this information if they do not want to and, if given, it will only be seen by a small number of researchers at Cardiff University and Ipsos.
Students will also be asked if researchers can use their survey answers for data linkage research, meaning their answers will be anonymously linked to other data that is routinely collected about them, e.g. education records, and this will be held and reported at an anonymous level. The school will show students a video about this, which you can view here: www.shrn.org.uk/gdpr along with further information about data linkage. If you cannot access the video or website, please contact Matt Davies at shrn@cardiff.ac.uk or 029 2087 4433 to request a leaflet. Your child can say they do not want their answers to be used for data linkage if they want to.
All data will be treated in accordance with the Data Protect Act (2018) and the General Data Protection Regulations, and you can read our data privacy notice here: www.shrn.org.uk/gdpr The survey is strictly confidential unless a student response raises concerns about their welfare, in which case we will notify the school’s safeguarding officer if we have the student’s name. Cardiff University use the survey data to compile the Student Health and Wellbeing Reports and for research into adolescent health. The Student Health and Wellbeing Reports contain only aggregated data, e.g. the percentage of Year 7 boys who eat breakfast daily.
I hope that you will be happy for your child to take part. If you have any concerns, wish to see the survey questions or withdraw your child from the survey or from data linkage research, please notify school reception as soon as possible.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Simon Murphy